


A Smattering of Actual Conversations

by xpityx



Series: Conversations [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Asexual Character, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:08:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22975309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xpityx/pseuds/xpityx
Summary: They hadn’t spoken at all at first. Jon had been stumbling with exhaustion and Martin had felt very fragile under the crush of humanity outside of the Lonely. Basira had found them at Martin’s flat only a few hours after they arrived and had given them keys and instructions on how to get to Daisy’s safehouse. Jon had argued hard to stay and help, but Basira had been resolute.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Series: Conversations [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1620742
Comments: 22
Kudos: 125





	A Smattering of Actual Conversations

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my babe SlumberousTrash for the beta <3

They hadn’t spoken at all at first. Jon had been stumbling with exhaustion and Martin had felt very fragile under the crush of humanity outside of the Lonely. Basira had found them at Martin’s flat only a few hours after they arrived and had given them keys and instructions on how to get to Daisy’s safehouse. Jon had argued hard to stay and help, but Basira had been resolute.

“Jon,” Martin said, the fourth time they started in on the same argument. He didn’t say anything else, he didn’t have any other words right then, but Jon slumped back in his seat.

Basira gripped Jon’s shoulder and shook him a little. 

“Don’t die and don’t fuck up.”

Jon nodded.

“Bring Daisy back,” he replied, and Basira agreed. Then she was gone and they packed as best they could: just a rucksack with a change of clothes and some notebooks. 

They paid an extortionate amount of money for train tickets, first up to Edinburgh and then onto Inverness, finally getting on a local train to Attadale. Martin wasn’t sure how his bank account was doing and was slightly afraid to look at this point. Even Jon, who was half asleep, roused himself long enough to deliver an extended rant on train prices and the environmental consequences of such as people opted for short flights instead. Martin nodded and hummed in the right places, all the while steering him first to WHSmith’s for some sandwiches and overpriced water, and then past the ticket collectors and onto the train. Martin directed them and Jon did any talking that needed doing. 

Now, in a picturesque cottage somewhere in the Scottish Highlands, Martin stood under a hot shower and cried. He was glad he could—that he hadn’t gutted himself of all emotion in the way he feared he might have. When he got out of the shower he made himself eat the pasta and sauce Jon had made with the few provisions they’d picked up on their way in. They’d had to take a taxi from the train station, and the chatter of the driver had rubbed Martin raw. 

He didn’t even have the wherewithal to blush when he got into the only bed and Jon, dressed in boxers and a t-shirt, climbed in the other side. It was only when Jon put an arm around his waist that he reacted, flinching badly. Jon froze then withdrew to the otherside of the bed.

“Martin?”

“It’s okay,” Martin replied, pulling the words up from the depths of himself, “it’s okay.”

Jon carefully put his arm back and, before Martin could decide if it really was okay, he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. 

  
  
  


He’d not spent much time outside of cities in the last few years and the wide open skies of the Highlands were something of a shock. He found himself mentally calculating how many blocks of flats could fit in the scrubland between the post office and the tiny shop in the village and had to make himself stop. 

For once, it was Jon who filled the silence with chatter. He talked about the book he was reading and the terrible sci-fi series Georgie had made him watch when he was staying with her. He talked about himself, even. Martin learnt that his grandparents had moved to the UK from Sylhet, northeast Bangladesh, when they were newly married. His great uncle had been living in Tower Hamlets for five years or so and had found them some work in a local textile factory, near Spitalfields. There was a Walkabout pub there now. They’d lived there for eight years, but moved down to Bournemouth when a gang of kids killed one of the workers from the same factory as them. In Bournemouth they’d opened up their own sewing business, had his mother, she’d got married, and then his parents had died young and left Jon with his grandmother. She’d spoken Bengali, Sylheti, Arabic and English, but she’d never taught Jon. 

“I wonder sometimes if she didn’t want me to be bullied more than I already was,” Jon added.

Martin blinked a little before realising he needed to say something in reply for this to be considered an actual conversation.

“My grandparents spoke Irish but my mother, when she’d talk about them at all, said they didn’t want their children to speak the language,” he offered. “I guess for the same reason.”

“Fucking British,” Jon commented, perfectly serious. 

Martin snorted.

“Yeah, fuck the Brits.” 

The silences between them started to become easier then, and Martin had less trouble breaking them with a stray thought or question. 

  
  
  


They slept together every night, Jon curled around Martin, and it was so good: maybe the best thing he’d ever known. Half of him wanted to know what it meant: if it meant anything at all. He spent an hour while Jon was napping trying to look up symptoms of supernatural trauma on their sketchy internet connection, but could find nothing about cuddling. 

They talked about the little things: what the locked attic might contain—Martin was betting on human remains, possibly in lye, while Jon was convinced there was an arsenal up there; what the Scots fed their cows to make them so huge; if you should be allowed to make tea if you kept putting the milk in without taking the tea-bag out first. The answer to the last was, of course, _absolutely not,_ but Jon kept doing it anyway, sending little half-smiles at Martin whenever he frowned at him for it. 

It made Martin’s heart ache. 

Like pins and needles, he could feel the love he’d felt for Jon creeping back. It hurt, and he wasn’t sure he wanted it, not when he didn’t even know what Jon was thinking. He’d tried to write out his thoughts, but he’d sat with the pen on the paper so long that a black stain had spread out from under his pen, creeping across the cheap notebook paper until Jon had called his name and startled him.

Sometimes, especially when he was younger, when he hadn’t known what to do with all the things he’d felt, he’d picked up a pen and just written. He had a whole box of notebooks at home, full of teenage longings and half-rhymes. He could always write, even when he couldn’t explain himself out loud, and the lack of words flowing from his pen across the page nagged at him. He would keep trying though: he was hopeful it would come back to him.

  
  
  


They went for a long walk one morning, a little over a week after they’d arrived, and Martin was almost sure that Jon wanted to hold his hand. He kept walking close enough that their shoulders brushed, but whenever Martin looked over at him he was staring at his feet. He could just _ask_ , he told himself over and over, but he stayed quiet.

They always gravitated towards the tiny kitchen when they got back. This time Jon seemed to be taking off his shoes and coat as if he were in a race of some sort, throwing his coat over Martin’s before heading down the hallway. Martin could hear the clink of cups and the kettle start to boil as he took his own boots off in a more relaxed manner, stopping to make sure Jon’s coat was actually on a hook, rather than haphazardly draped half on, half off. 

“I don’t remember everything about being about being nearly dead,” Jon announced when Martin entered the kitchen, startling him enough that he stopped where he was, under the lintel. “But I remember the sound of your voice, the rhythm of all the words you gave me. And I wanted to give you something in return but it turns out that I _really_ can’t write poetry. So I decided to find you some but the internet here is terrible and it took a lot of research…”

He paused, which was probably the cue for Martin to speak, but Martin was still stuck on the idea that Jon had _heard him_ in the hospital. Jon reached into the pocket of his cardigan and brought out a crumpled piece of paper, smoothing it out against his thigh for long seconds before turning it first one way then the other. 

“' _I wish I had a thousand words for love_ ,’” Jon read, “‘ _but all that comes to mind is the way you move against me when you sleep, and there are no words for that_.’”

“Oh, _Jon_.”

Tears pricked at his eyes and all he could think of was all the poetry he would write for this man, this man who he loved so very much.

“Is it enough?” Jon asked, folding the paper carefully and placing it back in his pocket.

“Yes,” Martin replied then stepped across the distance that separated them, Jon going easily into his open arms. “It’s everything.”

**Author's Note:**

> Jon is quoting [Brian Andreas](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/131148-i-read-once-that-the-ancient-egyptians-had-fifty-words)


End file.
